Cursing Distance
by Khashana
Summary: Bones thought they were fine. But they aren't. And if he'd only made Jim stay a little closer, he might not be in this situation. Sequel to Five People Who Wondered Why Jim Kirk Was Broken, but can be read alone. Rated for swearing and movie events. Slash, McKirk, K/B, K/M, Kirk/McCoy. Not a happy ending.


**A/N: SPOILERS FOR INTO DARKNESS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.**

I watched the new movie, and realized none of my Kirk/Bones academy fics fit in with the movie. First, Jim's sleeping with the alien girls. Then, we hardly see Bones, and nobody so much as calls him down when Kirk is dying. And then I thought about Five People Who Wondered Why Jim Kirk Was Broken (And One Who Just Dealt with It), and realized that if Kirk went so far that they had to take his ship, that Bones sure hadn't kept his promise, intentionally or not. So, being me, I thought of a way to fit the new movie with my established story. Also works pretty well for just about any academy!romance K/M.

Warnings: Spoilers. **Not a happy ending.** Slash. Bones' mouth. Ending looks awfully K/S slashy, even though I only mean it as friendship.

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Jim didn't do relationships like other people, and Bones was fine with that, honestly. Jim was a damaged soul, and, to be frank, so was Bones, to some extent. He was almost glad Jim didn't make a big production out of their relationship. He wasn't exactly the type to let his soft side show, after all. The open relationship thing, that he didn't expect, but after having their first serious fight about it, they worked out a system where if either of them wanted to sleep with someone else, they had to at least invite the other one to join in. Jim had frowned and halfheartedly pointed out that not everyone was into three-or-moresomes, and Bones answered that if the potential partner was concerned about logistics, Jim could assure them it wouldn't be a problem, and if they didn't like the lack of intimacy, it constituted cheating. Jim had accepted this concession more or less gracefully, and the system had turned out to be excellent.

Now, though, Bones was wondering if he should have fought harder to keep Jim close to him.

Because it had occurred to no one to call him when Jim was dying.

He was already feeling guilty about having broken his promise to Jim. He had promised to catch Jim, to tell his lover when he was going too far, but with the distance they'd created in their relationship, he'd believed Jim was doing all right as a captain. He knew Jim was cocky, but he'd never realized it was to such an extent that Pike would call Jim in to take his ship away. And Jim didn't call him, either when he got the news or after losing Pike, and the rational part of Bones' mind told him the first was Jim's self-preservation instinct and shame, and the second was his grief, but in the back of his mind, he wondered if Jim blamed him, if Jim noticed that he'd broken his promise. But then they were hunting down John Harrison, and there wasn't really time for a heart-to-heart. Hell, Jim practically swore at him just for taking a few vitals, and ordered him,_ ordered him,_ to sickbay. That hurt like shit, even though Bones pretended it didn't.

And then, that privacy, that distance, meant that none of the crew realized what he and Jim were to each other, and nobody called him until Jim was already gone.

Spock, the bastard, had been the one to stay with Jim as he died, but Bones couldn't resent him for it, not if the hobgoblin was any comfort to Jim in those final moments. Still. If Scott had only known, Bones could have been there, could have talked Jim through it, if not stopped his death—he was running through possibility after possibility in his head and had to admit that he couldn't have saved Jim even if he had been there.

But this, this staring down at Jim's cold body wondering if Jim even knew how guilty Bones felt, this was the worst.

It hadn't hit him quite yet, the grief. Bones was mostly numb, with the creeping guilt underneath. The grief would hit soon, and Bones hoped to be alone or at least in a decent bar first when it did. It wouldn't do to break down in front of all his nurses.

His doctor's brain was still flying, looking for a solution, refusing to give up. Having run out of obvious ideas, he was now running through the uses of every item his eyes fell upon, chemicals, equipment, tools, tribble—

Tribble. He peered at it, not daring to hope.

The tribble moved.

Bones latched onto the idea and ran with it, mind working even faster than before—Jim's brain was dying as they stood there, they had to contain him, they would need more of Khan's blood, what chemicals would he need to produce a serum…

He spent the next seventeen hours synthesizing the serum and checking it against Jim's allergies and genetic code. Whispering a mixed string of obscenity, pleading, and prayer, he injected the serum into Jim's frozen body and waited.

He waited by Jim's side for a day without sleeping. The moment when Jim took a first, shuddering breath was the best moment in Bones' life after the birth of his daughter. He laughed, and then he cursed Jim, and then he cried. Finally, he slept.

He waited by Jim's bedside for three weeks, monitoring his vitals and barking at nearly everyone who came by to leave him alone. He didn't realize it was Spock he was barking at when the Vulcan came in the first time, but Spock ignored him anyway and came to stare at Jim from a few meters away.

Just to break the silence, not because Spock cared, for some unfathomable reason, about Jim as much as he did, Bones outlined Jim's vitals and his estimations. Spock watched and listened and didn't speak.

He left a few hours later, but came back the next day. And the day after that, and every day after that, until, a little more than two weeks after Jim's 'death', he woke up.

Bones was at Jim's side before the machines indicated increased brain function and heartrate, and was already scanning Jim when bleary lids fluttered open and blue eyes found his.

In that instant, Bones found it possible to forgive both Jim and himself for the damage they'd done to their own relationship without meaning to.

And then he stopped taking up all of Jim's field of view and gave Spock the credit he deserved. And Jim ran with it.

Jim, his Jim, had eyes only for Spock, had words of gratitude and that smile only for Spock, and through Bones' elation came the cold, cold dread of the thought that he might have lost Jim anyway.

_Fin._

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I don't know what comes next, because I'm pretty sure they're going to make a third movie, so the possibility of canon is stifling my creativity. So, if you want to be aware if I write more, **set me on author alert**, not story alert, because any sequel will be a separate story.


End file.
